A rant about a terrible tournament, scummy promoter, and my own failures

TLDR: Almost no one showed up, retarded judging, and I suck I'm either too passive or crazy-berserker-sloppy-aggressive.

I just need to get this off my chest, but it's long...

From the start, I should've known that this would be a bad idea. A local TKD tournament was trying to hop on the MMA bandwagon and incorporate submission grappling. I wasn't particularly intrigued until I found out two things:

1) This tournament was being held IN my own city. The thought of a tournament that's within 20 minutes of my house was mindboggling in the best way possible. Even better, it was being held about 6 blocks away from my favorite pizza shop, which would make post-tourney grubbing even more of a pleasure.

2) One of my teammates was helping sponsor the tournament because he was friends with the guy running it. To encourage people to attend, he offered to sponsor anyone from my gym that was going.

So between the fact that it was local and the fact that it was free, I jumped at the chance to get in there!

I arrive at 9, expecting the tournament to start at 10. I'm afraid that I'll be too heavy for a sensible weight division. I've been sick this last week between a fever and an ear infection and I recently started taking antibiotics for the latter -- all of which has been affecting my poundage in a negative way. I'm one of these people who eats constantly when I'm, as if I'll die if I stop, so I was up from 148 to 150 by Monday.

However, because I was past my fever (and was unaware of my ear infection), I jumped back into training by Tuesday. So once I was training again I was back to 148 by Wednesday. All was well... Until I started on the antibiotics, which surpressed my appetite so that I didn't know I was even hungry until I felt like I was going to pass out, and even then, I felt more nausious than anything. Suffice it to say, I've been eating less than usual since Weds, but today I woke up at a whopping 152.

I couldn't find information on the weight classes (there was hardly any info online), so I assumed that the cutoff would be 150. Turns out, it goes from 143 to 159 which seemed kind of arbitrary, but whatever. My teammate, however, cut from 155 to 145 only to find this out. We weigh ourselves and meet some other teammates on the mats. It's around now that I discover that my school's students are the only ones present.

The guy running the grappling section of this, who's also an MMA and Muay Thai promoter, says that he'll hold off on beginning to see if more people come. When we question why he didn't bring anyone from HIS OWN GYM, he starts saying "no, my guys do MMA, they don't..." We all raise an eyebrow and give him a confused look.

My teammate that's been sponsoring this explained to me that he's been feeding the tournament owners lines about how he runs an MMA gym, not a TKD school, which is why none of his guys came. Apparently they didn't realize he was bullshitting. This promoter is known for being a sleaze, so we figured he did 0 promoting for this tournament and just showed up to collect whatever money came through.

Eventually, a couple more people show up, but my school has the considerable majority of competitors. I'll just call them by the initials of their first names -- M, D, C, J, and R. M and D were relatively new and doing the beginner division (0-2 years). C was a good wrestler with no submission experience doing the beginner division as well. J had 2 years of sub grappling under his belt and was also doing beginner. R was a state champion wrestler who had maybe a year or less of submission grappling and was doing Intermediate (2-3 years). I've got almost 3 years of grappling, so I too signed up for intermediate. 3 strangers showed up to do beginner. The weights were all across the board.

J, who weighed 180 something, had only one opponent that weighed 210. My teammate took him down and got side control. He almost got an americana/straight armlock, but his opponent powered out. At one time, he gets reversed, but he's able to escape, scramble, and score another takedown. Before long J is back in side control. He's attempting to attack, but the other guy won't let go of a "guillotine" that's long lost. The time runs out and the score is 1-2 -- advantage bigger guy.

At this point everyone is flipping out because the score should really be 10-3, but if it were 2-1, J should be the victor nonetheless. From what I gather, he got 1 point for the submission attempt and his opponent got 2 for the reversal/having side control. After we explain to the ref/promoter how HIS OWN POINT SYSTEM WORKS, he admits his folly but refuses to overturn the decision.

Now the smaller weight classes are up. I assumed that I'd be going against R, since we were the only intermediates. I was okay with this since I don't see him much, but I know he's a sick wrestler with good top control. I figure, we're not very familiar with each other's games, and he's a good opponent. Well, apparently, they decided to arrange the matches so that M and some other tiny wrestler would have their own weight division since they were the lightest. However, this division completely ignored skill. I, on the other hand, would be FORCED to sandbag in the beginner division.

R was able to win all of his matches on points. It seemed like he forgot how to grapple on the ground, so he just took his opponents down again and again. R vs the other wrestler was pretty epic; they were both highly skilled at their crafts.

Finally my division begins. At this point, between the fact that I have to fight beginner and that my teammate has been robbed, I am very unhappy. They have my fighting my teammate D first, and I protest and tell them to at least let me fight the stranger before I go against my own teammate. The promoter shrugs and rearranges the matchups.

Now, if you guys read my last thread about a grappling tournament, you'll know that I have a really hard time "waking up" in competitions. I'm often too passive and don't really do anything until something just clicks. This time, I decided that I'd go balls to the wall from the start to FORCE myself to wake up.

We shake hands, I take him down, pass his guard, but lose it. I'm in his guard and I tripod. However, I suddenly blank out and forget what options I have (sprinters pass or hips forward) and just sit there like a dumbass. Before long, the guy gets control of my arm and whips his leg over for an armbar. I usually RNC grip my hands and stack, but I was too slow, and I found myself down on my side. I threw my legs over him and stepped around, landing myself in reverse mount.

I hastily attempted a sloppy kneebar, but lost it and he wound up in side control. He almost mounted me but I blocked his knee and began sucking his leg into halfguard. I felt that he was off balance, so I bridged him over and landed in his guard. After much crappiness on my part, I manage to pass and mount again. I go for a mount triangle, but it was sloppy and he creates a scramble. I take him down again, mount him, and throw on a much better triangle. He rolls my over, I get the angle I'm looking for, lock my legs, get the underhook, and roll him back over for a mounted triangle. His arm is outstretched so I switch to an armbar and finish.

So basically, I managed to be less passive, which resulted in my going at stupidly grueling pace and being extremely sloppy and hasty in all of my attempts. I asked the kid how long he trained for and he said a year. That makes this whole ordeal even more disappointing since I almost got finished by someone with a third of my exp. While I won, I did it ugly... real ugly.

There was supposed to be an absolute division for the winners of each div with a $250 cash prize, but since no one was interested in taking on the really big guy, the promoter just kept the cash for himself.

Also the mats weren't made for grappling. They were roughly textured andd create TERRIBLE mat burn.

Also, there is one moment that I am proud of. When I was warming up with R, the state champ wrestler, we started rolling fairly competitively. During the standup, I actually managed to land a takedown on him (something that's very rare for me). I went for an uchi mata, which took him off balance, but didn't drop him. Just before he could regain footing, I swept his other foot right out from under him. That totally made my day.